Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) edit data Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn was the father of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Russia ( 1918 - 2008 ) Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian.

Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994. Solzhenitsyn was the father of Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a conductor and pianist. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich : Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn : 9781482563443 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Paperback We can notify you when this item is back in stock Notify me Try AbeBooks Description ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World).

The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history-never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed. The editor of Novy Mir, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, wrote a short introduction for the issue, titled "Instead of a Foreword," to prepare the journal's readers for what they were about to experience. show more Product details 149.86 x 228.6 x 6.35mm | 204.12g Publication date aA masterpiecea]Squarely in the mainstream of Russiaas great literary traditions.a a"The Nation" show more About Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn ALEKSANDR ISAYEVICH SOLZHENITSYN (11 December 1918 - 3 August 2008) was a Russian writer, dissident and activist. He helped to raise global awareness of the gulag and the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system from 1918 to 1956.

While his writings were often suppressed, he wrote several books most notably The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. "For the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature," Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed. show more Follow us Top 10 Greatest Russian Writers of All Time – TopYaps Share On Facbook Share on Twitter One of greatest gifts that Russia has given to the world is its Literature. Names like Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekov and Fyodor Dostoevsky are among the most famous Russian writers that have become household names across the globe. Their writings have been translated in several languages, and, today their novels and short stories occupy a special place in the world of classics. Given below is a handpicked list of the top 10 greatest Russian writers of all times. Read on to know them! 10.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Historian, novelist, and dramatist, Aleksandr, was a Russian writer who created awareness about the Gulag, the Soviet Union government agency that administered the labor camps, and the suppression of people living in such camps throughout the Soviet Union. Two of his most famous works include ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ and ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’. Image Credit: moniquespassions.com 9. Ivan Turgenev: A contemporary with Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev remains widely acclaimed for his novel ‘Father and Sons’. He was also a short story writer and play writer. One of his most cherished short story collections is ‘Sportsman’s Collection’. Initially his work, Father and Son was denounced by people in Russia, which also led to his leaving the country, but today, it is considered as one of the best classics of all time. Image Credit: english.ruvr.ru 8. Vladimir Nabokov: Vladimir Nabokov, most famously known for his novel ‘ Lolita ’, wrote in both Russian and English.

His first 9 novels were in Russian, thereafter, he became more popular around the world, and so started writing novels in English. He wrote Lolita in English, and only after its huge success in Paris, he translated the book in Russian. One of the most seemingly controversial, and out of line novels, Lolita eventually attained the status of a classic and presented Nabokov as one of the greatest Russian writers of all time. Image Credit: guardian.co.uk 7. Mikhail Bulgakov: One of the most controversial writers of his time, Mikhail Bulgakov, practiced medicine as early career but when he moved to Moscow, he discovered the writer in him and soon became famous for his satires on the social conditions of people in the Soviet Union. He displeased the administration with his work and that’s why all of his plays were banned, and his unpublished work confiscated. Image Credit: mykiev.info 6. Anton Chekhov: Anton Chekov, a physician by profession, was more inclined toward writing. He initially began to write only for financial gains but soon he became more ambitious about writing seriously, while also pursuing his medical practice.

To the surprise of many, this shy lad, eventually conquered the world of short stories and even today his works are taught all over the globe. Image Credit: guardian.co.uk 5. Alexander Pushkin: Alexander Pushkin rocked the Russian literary scenes with this romantic poets and novels. His first poem came at the tender age of 15, and soon he became a famous name in the Russian literature corridors. Being an emotional and sensitive person, he often gave into fights and duels. His fought almost 27 duels during his life. It was during one such duel against Georges Charles, who was trying to seduce his wife, that he lost his life. Also See Image Credit: voicerussia.com 4. Ivan Bunin: The first Russian writer to be awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ivan Bunin was rightly considered by many as the heir to the legacy of realism by Tolstoy and Anton Chekov. His mostly widely acclaimed work includes short novels ‘The Village’ and the ‘Dry Valley’. His autobiographical account given in the novel ‘The Life of Arseniev’ was another of his works that became legendary and still inspire people all around the globe. Image Credit: english.ruvr.ru 3.

Nicolai Gogol: The Ukrainian born dramatist, short story writer and novelist, Nicolai Gogol is best known for the portrayal of real life characters in all his writings. He started his writing career with short stories, and later got immensely fascinated with the history of Ukrainian. Ultimately he obtained all the requisite information from the department of history , Kiev University. Counted among one of the greatest Russian writers of all time, he also translated his learning later into a novel, Taras Bulba. Image Credit: guardian.co.uk 2. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Dostoevsky, one of the greatest writers from Russia, wrote novels and short stories that explore aspects of human psychology. Graduated as a military engineer, he resigned in 1844 and joined a group of utopian socialists. He was later captured by the police and sent to Siberia. This is where the real writer was born. He described his time spent in the prison in three different novels,’ The House of Dead’, ‘The Insulted and the Injured,’ and ‘Winter Notes on Summer Impression’. Apart from this, his most famous work includes ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Crime and Punishment’.

Image Credit: waitressthefilm.blogspot.com1. Leo Tolstoy 1. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or most often known as Leo Tolstoy in the Anglophone world, remains one of the best writers of all time. He began his carrier as a novelist and short story writer, but later in life he also wrote some plays and essays. His most celebrated works include ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’. During different phases of his life, Tolstoy lived paradoxically. In his last days, he left home and became an ascetic, but soon died of pneumonia. Image Credit: allvoices.com Russian Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89 | PBS NewsHour Russian Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89 August 4, 2008 at 6:45 PM EST Loading the player... Acclaimed Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote extensively about the gulag prison system and won the Nobel literature prize for his books on abuses in the Soviet Union, died Sunday at age 89 after a reclusive life fraught with challenges.

SUPPORT FOR PBS NEWSHOUR PROVIDED BY MORE VIDEO Conversation: Gulag JEFFREY BROWN: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was first a prisoner in the Soviet Union’s vast Gulag system and then a writer who exposed the horrors of that system to the world. He was born into the first generation following the 1917 Russian revolution and served in the Red Army during World War II. But in 1945, he was arrested by Joseph Stalin’s secret police. His crime: disparaging the Soviet dictator in a letter to a friend. In 1962, during the short-lived liberalization under Nikita Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn was permitted to publish “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The searing tale of the struggle to survive a winter day’s imprisonment drew international acclaim. Solzhenitsyn would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, but renewed scrutiny and then censorship from the soviet state.

His most famous work, “The Gulag Archipelago,” part memoir, part history of the prison system in which millions of Russians lost their lives, was smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm and first published in the West. One of Solzhenitsyn’s sons spoke today of his father’s motivation in writing. STEPAN SOLZHENITSYN, Son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The misery of people here and the lack of freedom under the Soviet regime, their impoverishment after the Soviet regime was always a source of great pain to him. That is why he opposed the Soviet regime. JEFFREY BROWN: Solzhenitsyn was charged with treason in 1974 and forced to leave his country. He lived in the United States for almost 20 years and continued to write about the Soviet Union, while also criticizing what he saw as the failings of the West. In 1994, he received a hero’s welcome upon return to his native land. It was there that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday, outside Moscow, as his wife said he had wished: at home in the summer. He was 89 years old.

Author showed power of the word JEFFREY BROWN: And more now from Michael Scammell, a biographer of Solzhenitsyn, translator of many Russian literary works, and author of a forthcoming biography of the writer Arthur Koestler; and Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School and author of "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics." She's the great granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Well, Michael Scammell, can you take us back in time to give us a sense of the power and impact of Solzhenitsyn's works when they first appeared? What did they do? MICHAEL SCAMMELL, Columbia University: Well, you have to realize that the censorship of the Soviet Union was extremely expert and extremely professional, so that anything that was coming out of official literary circles had been thoroughly vetted beforehand and was generally dead and dull. When Solzhenitsyn managed to publish "One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich," it exploded like a bomb. And it had people in Moscow and even in the Soviet provinces saying, "The Soviet censorship is gone. Censorship is dead.

We are approaching a new era." Well, of course, that wasn't true. The censorship was softened for a short period, particularly while Nikita Khrushchev was in power, but it was gradually re-enforced. And, unfortunately, one of the reasons that it was, was the success in Solzhenitsyn in reaching not only a very wide public in the Soviet Union, but a worldwide public, as well. JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask Nina Khrushcheva, you were a student, I understand, at the time when he was sent into exile. What do you remember of that time? And how do you assess his impact? NINA KHRUSHCHEVA, The New School: I was in school. It wasn't even middle school. I remember I was very, very young, but the impact was tremendous. I remember we were walking the school corridors. And everybody was buzzing about the fact that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was ousted out of the country and he was declared a traitor. And I'm sure that everybody felt something more than just what was declared by the authorities.

And I remember our teacher was saying he was a horrible man, he betrayed the country, that writers shouldn't behave this way. But since I was brought up in a family where Solzhenitsyn was a hero, where the "One Day in the Life Ivan Denisovich" was read, and I'd already read it by then, I'm pretty sure -- I struggled very hard, I guess, to reconcile these two absolute polarities. One is that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a great writer and my great-grandfather thought of him as a genius, and then my Soviet school, where I was told that he was a horrible traitor and it was unseeming to a Russian writer to behave this way. Experience led to new genre JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Scammell, what about the man himself? He grew up in this system. What was there about him, in addition to his experience, of course, in the camps that turned him into this great truth-teller? MICHAEL SCAMMELL: Well, ironically, he was an idealist. As a very young man, he believed in the system. He believed in what he was told by the Soviet regime. He believed in true communism.

What he discovered, of course, through his experiences was that true communism was a distant ideal and that the Soviet regime had turned into virtually its opposite, but like many idealists he wasn't prepared just to stop there. He had a burning desire both to expose this hypocrisy and to bear witness to what he himself had experienced, particularly in the labor camps. And this witness took the form of stories like a "Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" we've heard about, but also in two magnificent novels, "The First Circle," which described his three years in a special camp just outside Moscow, and "Cancer Ward," in which he chronicled his experiences when he was very close to death with cancer himself. JEFFREY BROWN: And then Ms. Khrushcheva, in the most famous work, in "The Gulag Archipelago," it is a mix of memoir and of history. He called it an experiment in literary investigation. What did he mean by that? NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: Well, this book, I think, is probably one of the greatest Solzhenitsyn books. And he's going to go into history as the greatest writer of the 20th century of Russia.

And what Michael Scammell said just now is very important. I think Solzhenitsyn's incredible talent -- genius, really -- was that he was a great witness. He wrote what he saw. And because he was such a talented witness, I think this book, as an experiment or as a new literary genre, and actually in this Solzhenitsyn wasn't particularly very original, because all great Russian writers always come up with a new genre and then make them into something that the world basically stunned by and in awe of. I mean, Gogol created new genres, Pushkin, and whatnot. And Solzhenitsyn did, indeed, do the same. But it wasn't a diary. It was just an incredible witness, monolithic account of the horrors of Stalinism. And I think that is probably the greatest monument of Solzhenitsyn's legacy that would be left behind. Independent, abroad and at home JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Scammell, as we said, he came to the U.S. He lived largely as a recluse. I think you met him here.

He got most attention, really, for a famous speech at Harvard in which he was critical, very critical of the West. What happened? What was that about? MICHAEL SCAMMELL: Well, I think that his main impulse in making that speech was to inform the West what was needed for Russia, what was needed to rescue Russia from the Soviet Union. And that was his overwhelming concern. When he lived in Vermont, he shut himself away in his study, mainly so that he could write his series of historical novels, called "The Red Wheel," to explain, he hoped, the origins of the Soviet revolution. But his main concern was to find ways to encourage the West, to help the West, and to help the Russian people get rid of that system. In my view, his remarks on the West, which caused so much controversy, were almost throwaway remarks. Solzhenitsyn was not interested in America for its own sake. He wasn't interested in Western democracy for its own sake. He was interested in what they could do to help Russia get free of the Soviet tyranny.

And to that extent, I think it wasn't exactly he was misreported, but he didn't understand the Western media and he didn't understand what would be seized upon and commented upon the most. In this case, it was his rather disparaging remarks about America and about the West in general. JEFFREY BROWN: And just in our last minute, Ms. Khrushcheva, he went back to Russia, he had a hero's welcome, but that didn't last, either. How will he be remembered, do you think, in Russia? NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: It didn't last, either, because Solzhenitsyn was a very interestingly -- he was sort of one-line man, so to speak. I mean, maybe he wasn't interested in the West, per se, but he was very interested in Russia as a unique civilization. And, therefore, as everybody who thinks that Russia is a unique civilization, the West is by definition an enemy. So I actually think it's fair to say that he was remarkably critical of the West.

When he came to Russia and saw what "democratic" -- and I put it in quotes, that's how he believed democratic Russia was under President Yeltsin, he was even more disparaged, because he felt that it was the West's fault in many ways that Russia ended in that particular situation. JEFFREY BROWN: All right. NINA KHRUSHCHEVA: And his message of pushing Russia into greatness really didn't lay well with the Russian public at the time. JEFFREY BROWN: All right. We'll have to leave it there. Nina Khrushcheva and Michael Scammell, thank you both very much. MICHAEL SCAMMELL: You're welcome. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Author at The Imaginative Conservative SUBMISSIONS Alexander Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was an eminent Russian novelist, historian, and tireless critic of Communist totalitarianism. He helped to raise global awareness of the gulag and the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system.

He wrote many books most notably "The Gulag Archipelago" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. "For the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature", Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.pdf Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.pdf From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn 11 December 1918 Kislovodsk , Russian SFSR Died 3 August 2008 (aged 89) Moscow, Russia Occupation Laureate of the International Botev Prize 2008 Natalia Alekseyevna Reshetovskaya (1940–52; 1957–72) Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova (1973– 2008) Children Yermolai Solzhenitsyn (born 1970), Ignat Solzhenitsyn (born 1972), Stepan Solzhenitsyn (born 1973) (all by Natalia Svetlova) Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Алекса ́ндр Иса ́евич Солжени ́цын , [2] was an eminent Russian novelist, historian, and tireless critic of Communist totalitarianism .

He helped to raise global awareness of the gulag and the Soviet Union ' s forced labor camp system. While his writings were often suppressed, he wrote many books, most notably Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Telegraph Books Obituaries Alexander Solzhenitsyn Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has died aged 89 was not only a great, but a passionately committed writer – he believed it was his moral duty, in the face of systematic totalitarian obfuscation, to record Russia's 20th-century experience for posterity. Alexander Solzhenitsyn meets with Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street in 1983 Photo: PA 11:24PM BST 03 Aug 2008 In his lecture of acceptance of the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn quoted a Russian proverb: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." Those words succinctly encapsulated his literary creed.

In a country where autocratic leadership had long obliged the populace to seek more inspiring government, Solzhenitsyn, like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Akhmatova before him, became a vital source of spiritual succour to his huge circle of readers. Despite the ban imposed on all his works after the publication of his masterly A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), he was very widely read – in photocopied samizdat form – in his native Russia. He was also the only Russian writer to achieve the best-seller lists in the West, and sold more than 30 million books in more than 30 languages. Not that fame or fortune held much temptation for Solzhenitsyn. A big, loose-limbed figure, with an awesome Old Testament visage and booming voice, he was a fundamentally serious, ascetic individual, even something of a masochist, who distinguished himself, even among his long-suffering compatriots, with his capacity for enduring emotional and physical pain. He spent much of his life in confinement – both enforced and self-imposed.

Indeed having been a prisoner in his own country, Solzhenitsyn was scarcely consoled by the fruits of life in the Land of the Free. Related Articles Communism’s deadliest foe 04 Aug 2008 After being expelled from Russia, where he survived nearly a decade in Stalin's gulag archipelago, he immigrated to America – only to shut himself away behind barbed-wire-topped walls in a remote mountain village in Vermont, the better to maintain his punishing working regimen. Each year on February 9 he commemorated the day of his first arrest in 1945, by having a "convict's day", rationing himself to the diet he had eaten in the camps, 23 ounces of bread, a bowl of broth and a ladle of oats. America was perhaps an ill-chosen destination for a man of Solzhenitsyn's stern moral temperament. If he had despised the heavy-handed Soviet rule, he came to loathe the West's "smug hedonism" in almost equal measure. This view did little to endear him to the American media, which lost no time in transforming the dissident hero into a bigoted, anti-social ingrate.

Ever since he had stepped off the Aeroflot plane in West Berlin in 1974, Solzhenitsyn had made it abundantly clear that his last wish was to be allowed to die in his homeland. For years, his dedicated supporters predicted a glorious homecoming – an event comparable to that of Jesus riding back into Jerusalem, or even Pope John Paul II's triumphant journey back to Poland. When the return finally came, though, in the summer of 1994, it was a relatively subdued affair. That he chose to take the long, uncomfortable way home, travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway, was characteristic – as Solzhenitsyn explained, he wanted to meet "simple people and have private conversations which are not listened to." But that his arrival was greeted by only limited crowds, made up mainly of tearful, rapturous babushkas – the only generation which had first-hand experience of Solzhenitsyn's inspiring example – must have rankled just a little. After so many years of gruelling preparation, the "Prophet" had returned to find modern Russia gasping for all the frivolous material aspects of Western life he most despised.

The circumstances which opened the way for Solzhenitsyn's return home were the very same which rendered the Russian people immune to the force of his teachings. In the minds of his compatriots, the prophet and the fanatic had become one. Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in the thick of the postrevolutionary civil war at Kislovodsk, in the Caucasus in southern Russia, on December 11 1918. His father, an artillery officer who fought throughout the First World War in the imperial Russian army, was killed in a hunting accident six months before his son was born. And young Alexander was brought up in a ramshackle cabin behind the city jail, at Rostov-on-Don, where his mother eked out a living as a stenographer. Even as a schoolboy he knew that he would be a writer. He cultivated a love of reading during frequent visits with his aunt, who imbued him with the "beauty and meaning of the Russian Orthodox Church" and a patriotic passion for Russia's past. According to his own account he read War and Peace in its entirety at the age of 10. He was certainly an exceptional student.

But it was mathematics, rather than literature, that he went on to study at Rostov University. Meanwhile, he switched faiths, throwing out Christianity in favour of Marxism, by which he professed himself "absolutely sincerely enthralled" – and this in spite of the fact that, at 14, he had witnessed his substitute father, an engineer friend of the family, being dragged off in the first spate of purges, and some of his father's relatives, too, denounced as kulaks and exiled to Siberia. At university Solzhenitsyn was awarded a Stalinist scholarship for his keen work in the Communist youth league, and, before long, political and academic commitments so consumed him that during his courtship of his future wife, Natalya Reshetovskaya, Solzhenitsyn could only spare an hour late at night, after the libraries closed at 10pm, for their trysts. Even during those precious rendezvous he was wont to bludgeon his sweetheart into testing him on his history dates; and on their brief honeymoon in 1939 he was reported to have attended more to his copy of Marx's Das Kapital, than to his young bride.

When the Second World War broke out between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, the couple were working as teachers in a Cossack settlement at Morozovsk, north of Rostov. Solzhenitsyn immediately volunteered for the Red Army. He fought, first as a second lieutenant and subsequently as a captain in the artillery, across the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Poland and into East Prussia. He was a successful soldier – twice decorated for gallantry. It therefore came as a terrible shock when he was arrested, in January 1945, by Smersh. The astonished young Marxist was shipped back to Moscow, where he was sentenced without trial to eight years in labour camps, and exile in perpetuity – apparently for having criticised Stalin's policies in a letter to a friend on another part of the front. Shaven-headed and contrite after his encounters with the Lyubyanka squad, Solzhenitsyn swiftly revoked his belief in the dialectic. And so began his fierce struggle against the Soviet system.

In 1947 he was transferred to Marfino prison, a penal scientific research institute in Moscow, on which he would later model the "Mavrina" prison of his novel The First Circle (1968). His refusal to co-operate with the institute's research projects probably accounted for his relocation, in 1950, to a hard labour camp at Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. There Solzhenitsyn worked as a bricklayer and smelter in some of the harshest conditions that the inclement Soviet climate could provide. None the less, he managed to write, using tiny scraps of paper which he destroyed after committing their contents to memory. These tracts would eventually make up his first "camp" novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). In 1949 so as not to compromise Natalya who was working on a classified chemical research project, Solzhenitsyn had agreed to a nominal divorce, though they remained in regular contact. While at Ekibastuz, however, where visits were forbidden, he and his wife became estranged. Eventually he learned that she had set up home with another man.

To add to his troubles, Solzhenitsyn was found to have developed a cancerous growth – which was removed under local anaesthesia at a prison hospital. Soon afterwards, on the day of Stalin's death on March 5 1953, Solzhenitsyn was released from prison, having served his eight-year term. Subsequently, in exile at Kok Terek in southern Kazakhstan, he was allowed to teach mathematics and physics at a rural school. In retrospect, this was one of the most tranquil and productive, if not exactly happy, periods of Solzhenitsyn's life, during which he wrote voraciously in secret in his spare time. But then cancer struck again. On his way to Tashkent for radiation therapy, he fully expected to die, and he regarded his recovery as a miracle. The successful outcome of the operation did not prevent the onset of a severe depression, and over the next few years Solzhenitsyn poured torrential anguish into his writing: besides creating new works, he transcribed many of the plays and poems that he had composed and memorised while in the camps.

The accession of Khrushchev to the leadership in the mid-1950s marked a new, gentler era in Soviet politics, and Solzhenitsyn was one of many persecuted citizens to benefit from the atmosphere of détente. In 1956, after his conviction was formally annulled, he returned to Moscow, where he was soon reconciled with Natalya. They re-registered their marriage and moved to Ryazan, where he worked as a teacher by day and wrote by night. It was during that period that he wrote the final version of Ivan Denisovich, as well as Matryona's Place and Cancer Ward – all of which were typed out by his wife. Until the 22nd Congress of the Communist party in 1961 heralded a cultural thaw, Solzhenitsyn had worked under the assumption that none of his writings would ever be published. He nevertheless felt compelled to keep at it, if only because, as he later put it, "When you've been pitched headfirst into hell you just write about it." Now, finally, it all seemed worthwhile.

When he submitted the manuscript of Ivan Denisovich to the literary monthly, Novy Mir, it was accepted enthusiastically by the editor, who arranged for it to be submitted to the Kremlin for approval. Its publication in 1962 was a major event in the Soviet Union, and made its writer famous overnight. He was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers and hailed in Pravda as a "true helper of the party" in the "sacred and vital cause" of de-Stalinisation. Within a year the book was translated into all the major European languages, and met with almost universal praise. At the centre of the story was Ivan Shukhov, who, like his creator, served in the Red Army in the war only to be interned in a labour camp on suspicion of being a spy. The book described one day in Ivan's life, which began in the bitter cold of a Siberian winter at 5am, when every man rose and had to submit to a body search in the freezing wind, before going out to work on nothing more than a bowl of fish broth.

Solzhenitsyn did not succumb to the temptation of wallowing in details of torture and abuse: he made his point by concentrating on the relentless minutiae of everyday life. If Ivan did not watch his food bowl, someone would steal it. To keep over his bread, he had to sew it into his mattress. Informers were quickly knifed, as were attempted escapees, for if one man defected the rest were punished. In the camps there was one law: dog eat dog. Camp jargon, popular sayings, slang and coarse vernacular lent authenticity to the peasant-prisoner's voice; while the narrative was masterfully couched in short, spare, staccato sentences, mirroring the one-track minds of prisoners, whose endless struggle to survive left them no time for leisurely philosophising or dreams. Horror lurked in the meaninglessness of the times. Shukhov's humble battle to preserve his honesty and self-respect was the more poignant for his unspoken despair that life outside would be little better than that within.

Not long after the appearance of One Day, Novy Mir published a string of short stories, including For the Good of the Cause – in which an intransigent Stalinist was pitched against an idealistic schoolteacher – which confirmed his reputation, and enabled him to give up teaching and devote himself to writing. In the meantime, Solzhenitsyn's marriage faltered further. For when he was not demanding absolute submission from his wife, the moral disciplinarian was said to be occupied in affairs with other women; and the connubial split only widened as the political climate took another turn for the worse. Krushchev was ousted, de-Stalinisation was curtailed, and Solzhenitsyn came under suspicion. In 1965, before it could be published, the manuscript of The First Circle, as well as Solzhenitsyn's archives were confiscated by police, in what the writer later referred to as "the greatest misfortune" of his life so far. Solzhenitsyn, by now a seasoned self-publicist, set about countering the state's smear campaign with angry letters to Brezhnev.

In 1967 he addressed a moving appeal to the Writers' Union to defend literary freedom. But he was soon beaten into silence, and, removing to a small cabin at Obninsk, outside Moscow, withdrew completely into himself and his next work, The Gulag Archipelago. In the meantime, his reputation continued to grow abroad, following publication of both The Cancer Ward and The First Circle in the West. The former followed the decline and fall of a dozen cancer patients, their families and the hospital staff, at a clinic in the 1950s. Written in the same straightforward, expressive style as his former works, it drew a brittle counterpoint between the inane optimism of official propaganda and the inescapable aura of mortality in the clinic – what Solzhenitsyn called the transfiguring quality of suffering. The hero, like Solzhenitsyn, was a man sentenced to hard labour for criticising Stalin. Opposite him stood the Party official, Lavrenti Pavlovich, named thus after Stalin's hatchet man, Beria. A horrible figure, convinced of his own rectitude, Lavrenti was a denouncer – though how he came to denounce his wife he could not remember.

Even the villain of the piece, however, was treated with some compassion, reduced, along with his fellow patients by the great leveller of death, to a common state of bewilderment at the senselessness of their curtailed lives. Solzhenitsyn was at his insinuating best in Cancer Ward, milking the disease analogy for all it was worth. But this novel was by no means an unalloyed success. Indeed, as his novels grew in size and stature, the writer showed an increasing tendency to waffle: there were times when he might have benefited from a good editor. Diffuse, overpopulated, even tedious in passages – these were criticisms which were also levelled at First Circle, the title of which evoked the "first circle" of hell, occupied by the pre-Christian philosophers in Dante's Inferno, as a metaphor for his experiences at Marfino prison. But though this novel suffered from complicated plots and sub-plots, it was based on a classic Solzhenitsyn idea. At a good Russian prison in Solzhenitsyn's day, you could be sure of meeting the most interesting people in society.

For in the former USSR, where most prisoners were despatched to slave labour camps, it was only a handful of the most brilliant thinkers who had the right to internment in a better order of prison. Such was the colourful setting of First Circle, a sardonic exposure of the lunatic Soviet world of imprisoned professors – all labouring on scientific projects for the state which so fears them. In Gulag Archipelago, his biggest project to date, Solzhenitsyn returned diligently to form. This, his first non-fiction work, confirmed that he was not so much a lyrical narrator as a brilliant chronicler of historical detail. This huge documentation of the Soviet system of mass police terror from 1918 to 1956 was based on intense research conducted during his 11 years in prisons, camps and exile. In contrast to his novels, which focused on the Stalinist terror, the Gulag struck at the still officially idolised figure of Lenin. Rejecting the Kremlin's thesis that Stalin alone was responsible for the "excesses" of his time, Solzhenitsyn devastatingly demonstrated that the imprisonment of millions under Stalin was only made possible by Lenin's establishment of a ruthless police state.

In 1970 Solzhenitsyn was "amazed" to discover that he was to father a child by another woman, also called Natalya, whose typing services he had enlisted after his relationship with the first Natalya deteriorated. He had refused his previous wife the luxury of motherhood – in the belief that a child would divert his energies from his authorial mission. Moreover, ever since his radiation therapy, he had deemed himself sterile. The birth of his first son – which he treated as a gift from God – sufficed to transform his prejudice against procreation, and, after obtaining a divorce, he married Natalya II, who, though stronger and more sophisticated than his first wife, was also apparently prepared to subordinate herself completely to her husband's work. At the climax of Solzhenitsyn's struggle with the Soviet authorities – which was further aggravated by the award of the Nobel prize – she declared herself willing to sacrifice, if pushed, the lives of her children (she had since born him another son) for the good of his cause. In the event such drastic measures were not necessary.

By the early 1970s Solzhenitsyn was an internationally celebrated symbol of resistance, whose status inhibited the Soviet authorities from taking the fatal action which befell many lesser known citizens at the time. But, with the publication of the Gulag in the West in 1973, the Soviet authorities resolved to take action to silence him. Fearing that a trial and another prison sentence would serve only to provoke worldwide protest and damage the policy of East-West détente, the Kremlin decided to expel him from the country, in the hope that, once abroad, his voice would begin to pall and his authority decline. In a sense, perhaps, this gamble paid off. For, although the exile's influence initially only grew in the imaginations of those Russians left behind, after the Cold War it seemed that the more he said and wrote, the less his voice was heard – as his final return home testified. This waning response did nothing to curb Solzhenitsyn's industry, though. Once settled in Vermont he set to work in earnest on what was to be his life's opus, a "true account of the history of Russia" in the years leading up to the Revolution in 1917.

First conceived when he was a Marxist-abiding student in the 1930s, The Red Wheel was intended as a 20-volume colossus, about four times as long as War and Peace. The first volume, August 1914, was published to some critical approval, but the next instalments were postponed, as Solzhenitsyn appeared to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of his task. With his health failing, he had to content himself with writing a mere synopsis of the remaining volumes – though these were dense enough. Indeed time, seclusion and the advent of the democracy movement in Russia, far from tempering his ferocious Slavic conservatism, seemed only to fuel his zeal. In 1990 he published a 16,000-word manifesto, entitled Rebuilding Russia, in which he advocated a return to a monarchic nation, "one and indivisible", with the emphasis on stern local government, by pre-Revolutionary-style zemstvos. With the "alien" Central Asian Muslim states cast off, there was to be a central role for the Orthodox Church. A democratically elected leadership, maintained the dissident, was not really desirable.

These ideas were to find repeated expression after his return home, where, though he shied from stepping into the bear pit of Russian politics, he reasserted his authority with vehement criticisms of the corruption and incompetence of the country's post-Soviet rulers, and dire warnings of impending doom. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of those exceptional figures who had a message, a story to tell. Domineering and self-righteous, he was none the less a remarkable human being, a visionary, a crusader in the simplest sense, who was steered in his writing, as in his actions, by a deep sense of justice. There can be little doubt that he was one of the writers whom the grand old man of Russian letters, Konstantin Paustovsky, had in mind when he said: "They see the truth and they write the truth. Therefore their books survive.

they live and they will go on living and there is no need to worry about the fate of their books." Published August 5 2008 December 11 in Literary History: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Born | Interesting Literature December 11 in Literary History: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Born Posted by interestingliterature The most significant events in the history of books on the 11th of December 1918: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is born. This Russian novelist wrote a number of important works of fiction which reflect life in the Soviet Union, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). He was allowed to publish only one of his novels, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the Soviet Union, with the rest of his novels being published elsewhere. Solzhenitsyn was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. 1920: Olive Schreiner dies.

This South African novelist is best remembered for The Story of an African Farm, published in 1883, which is now regarded as one of the first feminist novels. 1941: John Gillespie Magee dies. This British-American poet is best known for his sonnet ‘High Flight (An Airman’s Ecstasy)’, which was quoted by Ronald Reagan following the Challenger shuttle disaster of 1986. Magee as a WWII pilot and was just 19 years old when he died in a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire on December 11 1941. As a poet, Magee was influenced by another war poet, Rupert Brooke, who had won the same poetry prize at Rugby School some thirty years before Magee won it.

Magee also wrote a ‘Sonnet to Rupert Brooke’: We laid him in a cool and shadowed grove One evening in the dreamy scent of thyme Where leaves were green, and whispered high above – A grave as humble as it was sublime: There, dreaming in the fading deeps of light – The hands that thrilled to touch a woman’s hair: Brown eyes, that loved the Day, and looked on Night, A soul that found at last its answered Prayer … There daylight, as a dust, slips through the trees, And drifting, gilds the fern around his grave – Where even now, perhaps, the evening breeze Steals shyly past the tomb of him who gave New sight to blinded eyes; who sometimes wept – A short time dearly loved; and after, – slept. You can read his more famous poem ‘High Flight’ here . Image: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author: Verhoeff, Bert / Anefo, 1974), via Wikimedia Commons . Share this:

Question: The novels 'The Gulag Archipelago' and 'One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich' are two of the best known works of which Russian author?
Answer: ALEXSANDR SOLZHENITSYN